The government approved the proposal of Minister of Communications Ayoub who during the weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, 24 Menachem Av, called for a significant easing of regulations governing the project for the deployment of an IBC optical fiber, owned by Israel Electric Company (IEC).

This is a project that will enable the highest speed on the Internet in a uniform way to upload and download files at a speed of 10 gigabytes.

The approved easing of regulations relief will enable the company to deploy the infrastructure to 40% of the country, especially in the big cities. This is a condition demanded by Cellcom before entering into an investment in the venture. Despite its investments, the venture, which was planned for nationwide deployment, was experiencing difficulties, as without selling it, there was a risk of its continued existence.

The Ministry of Communications said that “after extensive staff work, the necessary adjustments were made to the operation of the project and they were approved by the government, thereby enabling the citizens of the country to use fiber optics and to create an additional platform for spreading the fiber cable. HOT cable has indicated it too would also be happy to invest in the venture and enter a partnership, but since they are a company that builds the physical infrastructure, the Ministry of Communications preferred to permit it to compete in this venture and not enter as a partnership.

Minister Kara said that “the deployment of fiber optics in the State of Israel is currently negligible compared to the advanced countries in the world, as per the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development).”

The IEC’s “Unlimited” project was launched in 2013 after the government’s decision three years earlier. Therefore, it is called IBC (Israel Broadcasting Company), the deployment of fiber optics on the electricity infrastructure of the IEC. Together with the IEC, Bezeq and Hot also received a domestic operator’s license. The goal was to encourage them to upgrade their infrastructure, Deploy optical fibers, or use existing infrastructure.

However, this infrastructure was deployed only in the large cities: Tel Aviv, Ramat Gan, Kfar Saba, Haifa, Tirat Carmel, Beersheva, Ramat HaSharon, Ra’anana and Netanya.

The government was required to approve the initiative in order to accelerate competition in the field of fiber optic distribution, to promote it and lower prices. For this purpose, the government invested NIS 150 million in the project.

Approval of the easing of moving ahead was a condition of Cellcom to acquire 60% of the project from the Israel Electric Corporation. According to HOT, there was supposed to be a hearing on the matter and this decision was made earlier. Hot also asked to stop the process and threatened to appeal to the High Court of Justice.

Both Bezeq and HOT chose not to respond to the decision of the cabinet.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)